markk
-
Posts
1,630 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Store
Help Articles
Posts posted by markk
-
-
fantastic Cuban joint on Washington St. and 2nd. Does anyone know the name of the place?
La Isla, and you can see more photos of it here:
They very definitely serve dinner. There's a printed menu with some very good dishes, but the realy glory is the daily insert - you'll generally feast on exquisitely conceived and wonderfully executed dishes by ordering off this menu. It's BYO as well, and the opportunities for food and wine pairing, if you're into that, are fabulous as well.
-
I will never go to Inserra again--
Well, the brand new Shop Rite of Hoboken is an Inserra store, and it's magnificent - big, bright, clean, and friendly. Primarily, it's stocked with all manner of very upscale foods of very high quality. The seafood counter pretty much rivals Whole Foods, and there's a great deal of whole fish as well, plus always a loin of incredibly beautiful swordfish and tuna and numerous other upscale items, including soft-shell crabs lately, all beautifully fresh. And the meat department carries the all natrual meats from Australia or New Zealand, plus venison and buffalo, and in addition they carry pretty much the entire line of D'Artagnan products - whole fresh ducks, plus magret breasts and confit legs, and all of the terrines and pates. They even had the fresh foie gras slices before the ridiculous ban came in. And to a one, everybody in this store is extra-nice, extra-friendly, and extra-helpful. For sure it's nicer than most of the Shop Rites I have ever encountered, but in terms of food selection and quality, it's better than the Kings and Wegmans I've encountered as well.
-
Anyone want to comment about your experiences at Fuleen? I know that some of you have been there before.
I've eaten there three (possibly four) times in recent months. My first visit was superb, like yours was, and so were my next one or two. The woman you describe is Dorina, the owner's daughter, and she makes the excellent food all the more enjoyable with her expertise and willingness to share it.
The last time I went the food was disappointing and lackluster. I guess it was an off night, and of course almost all restaurants have them. This was the first time I'd tried the lobster there, and it was a major disappointment, as were the other dishes that night. This shouln't be a reason not to have returned, but for whatever reason, I haven't been back there since - and I think that the reason is probably that there are just too many other restaurants to try when this happens.
The things I've had there that have been outstanding are a few live steamed fish, one more exquisite than the next, and a magnificent large blue crab with rice noodle bundles and an all around spectacular presentation, not to mention some outstandingly good oysters, some truly impressive scallops, and some exceptionally good pan-fried noodles with luscious seafood.
Well, I may have just talked myself into going back another time.
-
You might be thinking of my review of Grand Sichuan International, in which I waxed, well, whatever people wax these days about the Auzhou Spicy Chicken. It was loaded with mouth-numbing peppercorns.
Thanks to e-gullet, I'm a relative newcomer to GSI. I ate there a few weeks ago (9th and 50th) and had the Auzhou Chicken and just loved the tastes and the heat. Other things I've taken out haven't been spicy enough though, so last night I engaged the lady at the counter in a discussion - I wanted something witht flavours like the Auhou Chicken, and also nice and spicy. Well, the taste I was craving, that I had loved, turned out to be the Sichuan Peppercorns. And when we chose the first fresh Chicken dish and another one whose name I don't remember, I pointed to the Auahou Chicken and said I was considering that again, and she said "Nah- that's a mild dish - you said you wanted really spicy - these are spicy - that's mild!"
Well, I hadn't thought it was mild, but these other two certainly were even spicier - enjoyably so too! Thanks for all these threads - they've helped me discover and enjoy this place.
-
Wow, seriously hardcore!
It's not too late to re-do the batch you just made....just strain out the chilis, do the same process with the same oil, let it sit for about a week, strain, and you'll have a great chili oil.
I like to use the less refined Chinese-branded peanut oil for my chili oils....it makes everything taste more fragrant when I use the chili oil. Safflower is good too though.
Thank you!
What are the rules for keeping and storing this? Somebody above mentioned that if I strained it out, it would keep longer. Finding it a bit mild, I left the chilies in for a few days. Now, with heating and re-using the oil, adding chilies, etc. I just want to be sure that I'm staing with in safe guidelines for keeping this. Any cautions or advice for me?
-
[Very dumb question here: I didn't realize there are times you want to bring cooking oils to a simmer. Don't most oils, especially grapeseed, have a very high boiling point? Won't the chilies be completely burnt by the time you get to a simmer?
Since I'm the person who started this "homemade chili oil" thread, i wanted to reply, although I'm not a food scientist, and my posing the original question certainly has no bearing on my ability to answer your question. Still, I wanted to offer my thoughts to see if they're correct...
The various cooking oils indeed have a very high "smoke point" - that means, the temperature to which you CAN heat them before they start to give off smoke and decompose and get off-tasting. So if you wanted to sear something in a very hot oil that didn't burn, you'd want Safflower oil, whose smoke point is 510 degrees F, as opposed to Olive oil which burns (smokes) at 375.
But the suggestion to me was to use a neutral cooking oil (one that would not impart any taste of its own) and bring it only to the simmer - that is to say, much below the temperature that it could be heated to for deep frying - -I think that's why Jinmyo chose the word simmer. I used safflower oil, and I didn't use a thermometer, but I imagine that if I had, I would have found that the simmer temperature was quite low compared to the oil's "smoke point".
Anyway, that's my take on this. And for sure, at the simmer, the chiles didn't burn at all.
I did put a great quantity of them in about half a cup of oil, and the finished product was milder than I had hoped for. Next time I'm going to increase the amount of chilies.
-
Score the breasts through the skin but not the flesh (as mentioned many times before in this thread) then _steam_ it with the lid weighted down -- Alton says 45 minutes, I say about 15-20 minutes.
Surely that cannot be correct for a duck breast - it weighs about a pound at most, and it cooks in a pan in twelve minutes - there's no way you can steam one for even 20 minutes. That's got to be the beginning of a recpie for a whole duck, surely.
-
To make szechuan style chilli oil put about 50 - 75g of crushed chilles into a bottle or preserving jar. If you have whole dried chillies fry them briefly to crisp them up, and crush yourself...Again though, any decent restaurant should be have some in stock if you really want to add more heat, or make dishes hotter for you anyway.
Yes, this oil is exactly what all the Chinese restaurants have. I'm looking for something hotter, though. When I have take-out food, I slice-up some serranos and/or habaneros and scotch bonnets and add them to the food when I re-heat it. With the original question above, I was looking for a way to make an "oil" or condiment from the serranos and habaneros and scotch bonnets that I buy in the market, to take (smuggle into) the Chinese restaurant(s) when I dine there. All suggestions greatly appreciated! Incidentally, I'm finding that That restaurants are able to make food that's much closer to "hot enough" for me, and was also asking about the differences in the various peppers - Szechuan, Thai, and the ones I've been buying - serrano, habanero, scotch bonnet.
-
I cook a duck breast dinner (Moulard Magret, from D'Artagnan) once a week,
and I'm happy to share my photos and techniques with you...
I score the breasts, as noted, careful to cut through the fat but not the surface of the meat. Then I turn them fat-side down on the cutting board, and with a very sharp paring knife, I trim out the vein of silver-skin that's visible - if you don't know what this is, it's a thread in the meat that looks silver - this will tense and toughen the meat when it cooks, and is easy enough to master that the second time you do it, you'll be an expert.
Then I salt and pepper the breasts, and put them skin side down in a fairly hot heavy skillet.
The cooking times depend on the size of the breast - bear in mind that the D'Artagnan breasts that say "Product of Canada" in the little circle are generally smaller than the ones that have "USA" stamped on them, so a difference of a minute or two is necessary. As you can see from my photos, I like the duck nice an rare.
I've also found that resting is crucial to the success of the cooking, and my own method is included here. I cook the breasts fat side down in the fairly hot pan for 7-8 minutes for the US breast, 5 or 6 for the Canadian. Sometimes, depending on the heat of the pan, the breasts cook what seems to be a little too fast and get really dark brown - this is fine. I've never had one burn, and the very dark brown just adds a delicious flavor. I do not remove any of the fat at all. After the 6-8 minutes, I flip them. To sear in the juices, I tilt the pan and slide the breasts to the edge so that one side, then the other, is submerged temporarily in the fat, and I move them around to make sure that all the edges are crisped, then I let them finish out their 4 minutes on that side. If you're good at touching the meat and gauging the doneness, what you're looking for is "extremely" rare, but crisp on the outside - during the resting period they'll cook through to a beautiful rosy rare, I promise.
To me the most important step is this: I take a very heavy, high sided small roasting pan (I have the Williams Sonoma one that's black inside), and I put it, empty, to heat up in a 325 oven about ten minutes before I start cooking. When I actually put the breasts in the skillet, I turn off the oven with the roasting pan. Then, when the second side of the duck has cooked, I transfer them to the hot roasting pan; if the oven seems hotter than "resting" temperature, I crack the oven door a little. The thing here is that I give the breasts a good fifteen-minute rest, and if I have undercooked the breasts, they even out to a beautiful "rare" during the resting process.
After a real fifteen minute rest, I slice them on the angle, and spoon the accumulated juices and duck fat from the pan over them. and top them with a teeny bit of salt.
I've made sauces based on duck and veal stock, but find that when they're crisped just right, the sauce is unnecessary. I do like something slightly sweet to accompany them, and so I make a salad dressing that contains aged sherry vinegar, and a horseradish-containing mustard, but also a little bit of orange juice and a hint of apricot jam - the balance can be very exciting, and to my taste just perfect with the duck. I also garnish with some fruits like red grapefruit or mango sometimes.
Many examples of how I serve this, and how the duck breast comes out with these cooking times can be found here:
Hope this helps, and hope you enjoy. Do remember that the original study on which "The French Paradox" reporting was based in November 1991 concluded that it was the mono-unsaturated nature of the duck (and goose fat) that people in the southwest of France were eating that was lowering their rate of heart disease. In the original European release of the study by Serge Renaud, wine was not considered a factor, for the reason that all European countries consume liberal amounts of wine, yet it was the people in the southwest of France that had the low rates of heart disease. Only "60 Minutes" played up the red wine angle. The New York Times front page coverage of that story stressed that duck and "foie gras" might be the next miracle foods. Enjoy !!!
-
A TREMENDOUS THANK-YOU TO EVERYBODY HELPING OUT ON THIS !!!
How long will my homemade chili oil keep? Do I have to keep it refrigerated?
-
Yes, I primarily meant for Chinese food. Does anybody know how the Thai Chilies compare in heat to whatever the dried red Szechuan pepper is?
(I to go one Thai restaurant, though, where their chili sauce could be a little hotter - maybe I've just gotten too used to the serranos and habaneros and scotch bonnets (if indeed they're different from the habaneros).
-
I have some fresh chili peppers (of the Habanero, Serrano, Scotch Bonnet variety) and would like to make my own chili oil to take to restaurants where the food's not hot enough. Does anybody know what kind of oil to use, and how I should do this? Any and all advice would be greatly appreciated. (If I should use anything besides oil, please let me know - primarily, this will be to spice up Chinese and Thai food.) Thanks!
-
Does anybody know if fresh soft shell crabs are available yet in the NYC area? I was in a restaurant today claiming that they were now available fresh - and I thought that we had a while to go yet. There are certainly restaurants selling them now, and when I ask if they're fresh or frozen, I'm always told "frozen". This place assured me they are fresh, available in the markets in New York City this week. Can anybody confirm whether this is true and if not, when the first soft shell crabs should become available in this area?
-
Share one of your favorite preparations of this delectable, cooked at home or prepared by someone else...
Well, foie gras is my hobby, so I'll happily share some photos with you.
I have cooked it at home, and as long as you get the pan really hot you're fine - it's better to have the pan too hot and take it off when it crisps on each side, then to have the pan too cool - besides, there's nothing wrong if it's rare inside. Here's a beautiful piece of French foie gras (imported by D'Argagnan) that I sauteed then served with a deglazing sauce of shallots and aged sherry vinegar with a little apricot preserve...
Eating foie gras in Alsace is one of my great passions. Here are a few favorites...
This is the "Cromesqui de Foie Gras" at Restaurant du Faude in the village of Lapoutroie in the lower Vosges mountains, near Colmar, and is a must for anyone traveling in the region. You can see all my photos of this chef's food here:
And one more dish to share, the Large ravioli of smoked and poached duck foie gras, pot-au-feu bouillon, covered with black truffle shavings served at Restaurant Le Cerf in Marlenheim:
And for anybody interested in more, there are lots more foie gras and French food photos located here...
Guyarts Ltd. Digital Food Photo Gallery
Well, I hope you enjoy!
-
I went to Kowloon Banquet for lunch today. It's decent value, that's for sure (there were shrimp, no crabs, no lobster),
The blue crabs that were a standard "buffet" item in years past are now a "special order" item- and many nights you will see regulars feasting on them because they have special ordered them with the owner; ditto the lobsters. I think that the neighborhood may not support them stocking these items on a regular basis. But, when they get them, they're of the the freshest and highest quality, and for sure they cook them every bit as well as the great Cantonese restaurants in Chinatown. I, and obviously many of the regulars, have found it well worth the effort of getting to know them and cultivating a relationship. That's why you'll see many people indeed gorging themselves on quite good buffet fare, and a couple of tables feasting their brains out on special things brought in for them as if they =were= in Chinatown. Considering what the state of Chinese food is in Jersey City and Hoboken - sugary sweet and sad - it's worth the effort for many of us. Hope this helps.
-
Do you think they will have "cream cheese on date nut bread " ? I do believe that was Chock Full of Nuts, which has also reappeared in Hoboken.
(Nedicks is supposed to be back too - does anybody know of any locations?)
-
But bring on the restaurant recommendations, I lean more heavily to semi-unique ethnic dives than to ersatz Manhattanite bistros.
Well, I don't know if this is semi-unique or even exotic, but it is sublimely good Cantonese cooking in the most unlikely of places - a Chinese Buffet in a small stip mall in Jersey City. They used to have blue crabs (ginger and scallion style) on the buffet, and they were outstanding, and it turns out that notwithstanding some of the less-Chinese buffet items, the quality of the foods and the preparation is just first rate. Ordering from the menu a few times, I discovered just how good the cooking can be. They take special orders, and now you see lots of regulars feasting on blue crabs, live lobsters, vegetables, etc.
Incidentally, they do one great thing - they don't leave lots of food on the buffet to get old when it's not crowded. This means that when you get there it may look sparse, but as soon as people sit down, they start cooking and filling it with things like salt-and-pepper heads-on shrimp, duck on the weekend, lots of good stuff.
You can check them out on-line here:
-
... are you just craving a simple lobster dish or do you have another intention...
I was just craving a simple, but large, and expertly broiled lobster. I'm really craving one that's stuffed with real, old-fashioned crabmeat stuffing, like they used to make in the good old days, but short of that, a great broiled Lobster.
I had a broiled, stuffed one in the Ironbound section of Newark the other night, but it wasn't great by any means. The stuffing did have large chunks of real crab, but also clams and other stuff, and it wasn't the trip down memory lane that I was envisioning.
I've been told to go to Spark's or The Palm, so I'm wondering if anybody has any lobster experiences there...
-
Does anybody have recommendatons for where to enjoy broiled (or broiled and stuffed) lobster in New York City? Not Chinese, please, but plain old lobsters - traditional broiled, baked, stuffed with crabmeat or anything similar? Thanks.
-
Last night I made pan-roasted Moulard duck magret with truffled duck stock, duck leg “confit”, and organic mesclun salad with shallots, aged Sherry vinegar, walnut oil, horseradish, and apricot dressing.
Gorgeous!
Did you have the confit made well in advance or was it a "quick confit"?
Really nice photography as well. Made my mouth water!
Well, I didn't make the confit at all. It's the confit of Muscovy duck from Grimaud Farms of Sonoma, which they carry at all the Whole Foods stores. It tastes just, just, just like being in France. I don't think there's really a point to make your own with this product around, except for the fun of it (and I do like experimenting with confit, of course). But with other things in the meal to concentrate on, I'm happy to use Grimaud's confit. Even without other things to concentrate on I'm happy to have their confit. The breast however is the Moulard which sells under the D'Artagnan name right in my very supermarket, and which comes originally from Hudson Valley Foie Gras.
-
Last night I made pan-roasted Moulard duck magret with truffled duck stock, duck leg “confit”, and organic mesclun salad with shallots, aged Sherry vinegar, walnut oil, horseradish, and apricot dressing.
With it we drank the Bodegas Weinert "Cavas de Weinert" 1994, which was its usual delicious self.
-
I'm looking for the place you love and continue to go back to because it's dpendable and the food is consistant and always great.
Well, it's not in Bergen or Passaic counties, but you just described La Isla, in Hoboken.
And to see the rest of this meal, click:
-
Happy to help. I should be able to access CDROMS of the Times & Sunday Times 1990-2000, but I'm not sure how comprehensive they are, or when I'll get the opportunity to look.
That would be WONDERFUL whenever you get to it. I'm positive it'd have to be either Sunday November 17, or 24, 1991. Thanks a million!
-
subsequent research seems to indicate that diet has very little to do with it (although red wine may have some beneficial effect), but the reluctance of French doctors to certify death as being due to heart disease may have much more to do with it.
I'm no medico, but I though that explanation was set aside some time ago. see eg Law & Wald, BMJ May 1999 for the numbers (and several other explanations of the French paradox).
Thank you! This was fascinating reading, especially all of the alternative explanations given. It was amazing to see that the original hypothesis, the mono-unsaturated nature of the duck and goose fat (in a cuisine which, unlike some Mediterranean zones, does not rely soley on monounsaturated fats) lowering the overall bad cholesterol and raising the good, was not even discussed! Hmmm. (Thanks again for this post.)
Grand Sichuan International
in New York: Dining
Posted
How do you tell the Fresh Killed Chicken Kung Bao at Grand Sichian International (9th & 50th) from the regular version on their menu? I ask because a few weeks ago a friend and I went and had the fresh killed Au Zhou and of course it was outstanding. He returned the other day and had a very disappointing Kung Bao, and now is not sure that he specified the Fresh Killed version - does anybody know how (other than disappointing) he'd be able to tell the difference?